Wednesdays
by Severuslovesme
Summary: I am any small bird, unnoticed, above, watching you are the traveler who can't know there is fog, or not stars, a steep dark that the all but given up for impossible next town is soon, soon. Come. We turn here.


i.

The day Violet realizes that she's in love with Cooper is a Wednesday.

After so many years of friendship – this should be more of a revelation. But his eyes follow her wherever she goes, and he touches her arm and it just … comes to her. She falls asleep that night and dreams of Cooper

_she sees his big heart, fluttering in his chest, opening up to enfold her – _

and sunshine and wakes up warm and smiling.

She nurses the knowledge slowly, patiently, because it's fragile and so is she and it doesn't do to rush these things, not with what's at stake. There will be time, later.

Something that was small and tight and _hurt_ inside her chest is loosening and growing and she thinks it might eventually swallow her up. (But she's ok with that.)

Naomi wonders at the bounce in her step but she eludes the question; holds it close, this blooming realization.

Maybe, she stops thinking about Bill.

ii.

Alan said her name like he owned her. Cooper says it like he loves her completely, totally.

(Alan calls, because he and Cami are getting a divorce and he says he could use a friend. She deletes his message and doesn't call him back, and when she tells Cooper she's laughing with happiness, and he laughs too. Cooper takes her out to dinner to celebrate and she smiles mysteriously from behind her wine glass, because he doesn't know what they're really celebrating.)

Time passes: there are patients and there is the new mystery of Addison and Pete and there are staff meetings and hospital visits but always there is Cooper.

He brings her a flower, a violet, he says, for Violet, and she puts it in a vase on her desk and kisses him on the cheek, a quick brush of the lips, light as a bird's wing.

The sun sparkles through her window and she thinks –

_there is a lot to look forward to._

She makes him sandwiches at lunch and ties his ties and filches the candy he keeps in his office for patients. The chocolate melts in her mouth and he smiles.

iii.

Violet – she goes on living because that's what you do and it's not time yet, she just knows. Not yet.

They drink margaritas at Naomi's while Addison thinks about babies and Cooper argues about basketball with Pete in between off-color jokes. Cooper tells her she'd be a good mother and it makes her burn, makes her wonder _what if_? (And no, she still doesn't want kids but the ones in her head now have Cooper's smile and are getting frighteningly hard to resist.)

Cooper doesn't quite throw up but comes close, so she gives him a ride home and she sits in the warmth of the car and loves him and sings along to the radio.

Life's busy, because she has patients and referrals and friends who are trying to date and therefore need constant advice, so sometimes she forgets. But then it will hit her, when he laughs or when she sees him from her office, spinning a patient in the air: She loves Cooper. It always makes her smile.

They stand in the break room and he jokes about internet sex; and she finally sees the bravado and the need under it and she laughs, because he expects her to, but she thinks: _soon._

iv.

It's another Wednesday, the day she realizes that it's time. She smiles all day long and goes home and shaves her legs.

The first time she kisses him it's slow, and very soft. His fingers tangle in her hair and she's afraid her heart's going to burst out of her chest.

Her fingers memorize the lines of his face, the curve of his shoulder. She buries her head in his chest and sighs. He kisses her neck and tells her he loves her and that she's perfect, beautiful. His eyes are lit with amazement, and joy.

– The skin and bones under her hands are Cooper's and she is giddy with the feel of him, the smell and taste of him –

But panic, irrational and unwelcome, hits her as he slides slowly into her – _what are we doing what are we doing what are we doing _– and Cooper feels her freeze, reaches for her hand and just like that, she can breathe. And then the sheets are as tangled as their fingers and they're laughing and she wakes up still holding his hand.

Addison says _Good morning_ and it's a question, but Violet just smiles. She kisses Cooper in her office and doesn't care that everyone can see.

v.

Her sheets smell of him now, and there are cheetos in her pantry and beer in her fridge and a feeling that she thinks must be happiness in her chest.

She can breathe now. And she hates to ascribe it to Cooper, but yeah. She can breathe now.

They argue about what movies to watch and where to spend Christmas and sometimes just for fun. They get takeout and go to the movies and spend most weekends in bed and it's so shockingly, blindingly normal that it startles her. (But she loves it.)

She had to endure Naomi's _please don't have sex in the office anymore, all the walls are made of glass_ lecture and Sam and Pete's teasing, but it's ok (because at the end of the day she goes home and Cooper's there and he rubs her feet and puts the dishes in the dishwasher and talks about getting a dog).

She waits for the dream to end, for the inevitable alarm. (She doesn't wake up.)

_Fin_


End file.
